Fastest Man in the White Mountains

Greg in Hope after
the 2011 Soggy Bottom

Bicycles & Icicles would like to offer a big congratulations to Greg Matyas, owner of Speedway Cycles, who proved—again—that even an old guy with an achy back can be a big-time ass kicker.

Greg won this year's White Mountains 100 with an elapsed time of 10.2 hours. And this came only a few weeks after his third-place finish in the 350-mile Iditarod Trail Invitational.

Congratulations to everyone who finished, including my friends Janice Tower, who took second on the women's bike division; Rachel Steer, who took second in the women's ski division; as well as Brian Garcia and Julie Malingowski for solid finishes. And condolences to Julie, who was derailed by mechanical problems and forced to scratch after a winter of training hard and looking strong.

I guess this means she has to start training for next year.

Don't piss her off

Blue Dot, Summer 2008

I don't understand why my pictures from Blue Dot always cause my friend Jeff over at Bike Carson to question my sense of chivalry. When I first posted this picture of Maura and Heather crossing the treacherous Blue Dot bridge over Campbell Creek a couple of years ago, he posted a comment that suggested I might consider a good photo to be of more importance than my friends' safety.

Blue Dot, Yesterday Afternoon

And after I Facebooked this new picture of Julie crossing the same bridge on Saturday, he posted a similar comment under it. But Jeff lives in Nevada, so there's something he doesn't know about the people I ride with.

To be fair, Heather routinely gives me shit about things like shooting pictures when I could be offering her a hand. But the truth is, she just looks for any excuse to give me shit. So when she started in again Saturday night, and I was laughing about similar comments left on my blog, Julie chimed in with the following observation:

"These people don't realize that you ride with women who would hit you if you offered us help."

Keep that in mind the next time you see me use a photo in which a woman looks like she might need assistance.

I don't ride with wimpy chicks.

Soggy end to the dry spell

The blog has been in a coma lately. This wasn't helped by a multi-day, non-biking trip out of town. Come to think of it, I'm having a little trouble remembering the last time I went on a real ride. I think it was ... oh, yeah, a freakin' week ago. No wonder I'm gettin' grumpy. Good thing I plan to remedy that situation on Sunday morning.

I returned home the other day and found this photo from Jules, who has been ripping her legs off preparing for this year's Soggy Bottom 100. She felt like flipping the bird to the notorious Swan Lake section of the Resurrection Trail during last weekend's training ride. And I don't blame her.

The Soggy will be held next Saturday. It's one more reminder that summer is flying by. Time to get busy and ride.

Who knows? Maybe I'll start coming up with stuff to rant about on the blog. I hope so, because ranting about not riding just sucks.

Time for a sun dance

Jules kicks up a little dust in the Yukon.

“Man, I wish it would just open up and pour. This rain is just messin’ with us.”

I was talking to this guy on the phone Tuesday afternoon as a cold, depressing mist fell over Anchorage. He isn’t a mountain biker, so I knew it was pointless to explain why I hoped the weather wouldn’t get worse. We were on different frequencies: He wants his lawn to green up without the aid of a sprinkler, while I want the trails to stay dry.

Hell, the thirstier my lawn gets, the more time I can spend riding a bike instead of pushing a lawnmower. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a perfectly acceptable situation.

And the dry, interior climate of Whitehorse spoiled me last week. The trails were talcum-powder dry. I found myself riding too close behind the Bike Monkee one afternoon, and ended up hacking and coughing for 10 minutes. (And this time it was because of dust!)

When this week’s wet weather settled over Anchorage, my motivation took a dive. I couldn’t force myself out Tuesday evening, so I did what I detest—I rode a trainer in the garage.

Before any of my friends say it, I already know what that means: It’s time to toughen up, Buttercup.

Matanuska Thunder Struck

The myth is busted. For several years, I’ve scoffed at friends who said positive things about the riding at Kepler-Bradley State Park in Palmer. I’d tried it twice and found little more than voracious mosquitoes and wide, boring trails. I refused to believe the stories were true.

That changed on Saturday when I drove north with Jules and the Monkee after staying up until 1 a.m. the previous night as we built her new Salsa Dos Niner. They knew where the good stuff is, and damn, it was fun.

Finding dry Alaska singletrack in May is about as easy as finding a virgin in Vegas, so to get my mountain bike dirty a full two weeks early was sweet. And those nasty mosquitoes weren’t out yet.

EndoRando was in the parking lot after wrapping up his ride, which included the shooting of a fabulous new piece of fine art for the Fabulous Finger Gallery. I hooked him up with some stickers for his fat bikes, and his pic will show up on the blog later this week, so stay tuned, boys and girls, 'cause it’s dirt season!

Survival mode

I’ve got a bunch of crap going on this week and, unfortunately, very little of it involves riding. So far. With all this warm weather, commuting conditions suck, and I’ve needed my car every day this week anyway. Hell, I even broke down last night and put the road bike on the trainer and spent about an hour spinning on the hamster wheel as a DVD played on the big-ass TV.

Which reminds me, in case I haven’t mentioned it lately: Riding a trainer sucks.

Wednesday night, come hell or high water, the fat bike’s back on singletrack. In the meantime, I’m trying to find time to figure out the sweet new camera that should boost the quality of photos on the ol’ blog, and I’m making plans for a very cool trip with Jules and the Monkee.

This week has sucked ass so far, but there’s good stuff ahead.

Speaking of good stuff, the week hasn't sucked for Jules, who scored a free Camelbak at Saturday night's Frigid Bits event, and then won 10 free stickers for proposing "No Waxing Required" for the new Bicycles & Icicles frame stickers.

The readers have spoken, and the stickers have been ordered.

Blue Dot paparazzi

The old footbridge over Campbell Creek on the Blue Dot trail could be described—if one were feeling generous—as sketchy.

It’s a rickety, collapsing wooden structure that’s in such bad shape it’s actually less slippery when it’s covered in ice and snow, because water and moss make it a real bitch to cross while wearing hard-sole cycling shoes in summer. When I posted this picture a couple of summers ago, it was, uh ... suggested that perhaps I should have been offering Maura and Heather a hand instead of snapping pics as they risked a cold bath.

And when Jules and I rode Blue Dot on Wednesday night, and I briefly forgot that it was her first time on the trail, it occurred to me to say, “Watch out for the bridge” just as she was about to roll onto it. She stopped right where you see her; next to a wheel-grabbing hole mostly hidden by darkness.

She immediately suspected, of course, that I was waiting with my camera to catch a gnarly crash photo.

I think my reputation among my riding partners might need a little polishing. I would never hurt one intentionally. After all, friends who will hit the trails in freezing fog at -2F don't grow on trees, you know.

Besides, I can always hide in bushes and get nasty crash shots when strangers ride by. And now that Julie mentioned it, that would be a pretty cool shot ...

Happy Retreat

The Lollipop Girls in their colorful jackets.

Changing plans at the last minute has never been my strong suit, but sometimes it just has to be done. Today’s ride was planned for Powerline, but things started looking grim as I drove up Toilsome Hill. The trees were starting to lean, and snow snakes were blowing across the road.

A skier in the parking lot at Glen Alps told me she had abandoned her outing because “the wind was blowing me all over the place.” It was time to punt. Between cell-phone calls and on-road interceptions, we re-routed four cars to the lower Hillside, where the trails were firm, the winds were calm and the temp was an ideal 18 degrees.

It was an all-fat-bike ride, including Julie’s freshly built Pugsley. Something tells me that girl’s gonna be smiling all winter.

It was a great daytime snow ride. And it came just in time, because the weather guys say ...

Monday: Highs in the mid 30s to lower 40s. Northeast wind 10 to 15 mph except east wind increasing to 45 to 60 mph along turnagain arm and higher elevations with possible gusts to 80 mph by mid-morning.

As good as it gets

An epic vacation is winding down. It's time
to face the tortuous flight home after
seven straight days of riding in some of the
most incredible mountain-biking terrain
in the world: Moab, UT, and Fruita, CO.
I'll sort all this shit out in later posts after I have time
to digest everything. For now, the pics can do the talking.

Harter on the slickrock at Bartlett Wash

Jules descends Porcupine Rim singletrack

The Bike Monkee on Sovereign

Heather on Handcuffs

And Jules sums up the whole experience

Illegal Smiles

And you may see me tonight
With an illegal smile.
It don’t cost very much
But it lasts a long while.
Won’t you please tell the man I didn’t kill anyone?
I’m just tryin’ to have me some fun.
—John Prine

Earlier this week, a guy named Adam posted a comment, saying he had just found my blog and was jealous of where I get to ride bikes. Adam, my man, go back and read the winter posts, then see how you feel, OK?

I don’t set out to inspire envy, but I’ll happily admit that revel in it when it happens, because I’m one of the lucky people who get to live exactly where they want to be. Long ago, I decided to always try to reside in places where I would happily take vacations. That way, I get to look up from the trail at least a couple of times a month and just smile until I steer off into the weeds. It’s a good feeling, except for the crashy part.

So here are some fresh pics from the past week to fill the ol’ blog while I'm busy this weekend.

Guess what I'll be doing.

Heather on Johnson Pass Trail last Friday.

Jules and Heather on Devil's Pass Trail last Saturday.

Jules on Devil's Pass.

Crossing an avalanche path.

Maura on Kincaid singletrack Wednesday evening.

Miles o' smiles

"Happy, happy
Put it in the ground
Where the flowers grow"
—"Shiny Happy People," REM

I shot this photo of my friend Kathy riding Queen Bee Loop last night. When I got home and moved it from the camera into my laptop, I thought two things: First, she'd look hotter in a helmet, and second, it's really fun to look at people who have smiles on their faces while they're riding bikes.

Not that I get much experience with that, given the bird-flippin' fetish that most of my friends' indulge on a regular basis. But sometimes, I manage to capture them in moments of happiness instead of fits of frustration. So, to end the week on a uplifting note, I decided to sift through a few photos from the past month and pay tribute to the Happy People:

Jules

The Monkee

H

Maura

Amber

Go ride a bike this weekend. It'll make you smile.

“I didn’t know it was about to turn!”

This is Julie. Julie writes a blog and climbs frozen waterfalls. She’s the demon who pulled me and Huber into last summer’s Soggy Bottom Sufferfest, and the saint who lives with the Bike Monkee.

She’s also a great person to ride bikes with because she’s cheerful even when things turn to suckage, and after hearing me grumble about missing a photo recently, she actually offered to go back and re-ride the same section of trail. I was so shocked that I declined her offer. I immediately regretted doing so, because I missed a good shot and the opportunity to encourage such offers in the future.

But I fear she’s learning bad habits from my less well-behaved friends, i.e. the finger flippers. As we I rode The Hive tonight, she couldn't flip me The Bird because she was too busy steering the Snow Ho, but she mugged it up with a tongue wag. Fortunately, such aberrant behavior was discouraged when she turned her attention back to the trail and realized that she was entering a tight, downhill switchback, prompting her make a quick adjustment before uttering the title of this post. I hope such a close call will motivate her to be a more disciplined model in the future.

Focus, Julie. Focus.

It’s all about my needs. What, you didn't know that?

Introducing ...

... Julie, the intimidating captain of the Sloppy Top Tubes. (As reported by Heather.)

"After finishing the 20ish mile ride Saturday, in which she suffered intense rain, a "shit-ton" of rocks, wonky brakes, and HAIL, the Sloppy Top Tube leader's face demonstrates that she is clearly ready for the Soggy. When asked about the particularly uncomfortable conditions of yesterday's ride, she simply said, "Bitch, I told you ..." and then walked away mumbling something about being the dominator of rocks and downhills. She was reportedly eating sugar cookies decorated with smiley faces (also somewhat mud spattered) at the time. It was an oddly inspiring moment."

Either Huber and I are in good hands, or we're going to get our asses kicked if we screw up.